


Fuzzybrain

by soupyspaceship



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Karl Jacobs-centric, Love Confessions, M/M, Song fic, Strangers to Lovers, Summer Romance, Swimming Pools, Underage Drinking, highschool au kinda, karl is a simp, this is all just very soft okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29840292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupyspaceship/pseuds/soupyspaceship
Summary: Karl Jacobs falls in love over the summer between his junior and senior year, when the air is full of chlorine and the hum of fireworks.inspired by the song 'fuzzybrain' by dayglow
Relationships: Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 7
Kudos: 85





	Fuzzybrain

June 3rd

  
They met in the summer between Karl's junior and senior year.

  
Karl was teetering on the dangerous boundary between drunk and tipsy, a blur of alcohol flush and dark nail polish amongst the swathes of bodies in the houseparty. Nervously bitten teeth marks lined the rim of his solo cup, a product of being just a little bit too unsure of what to do with his hands. 

  
He was reigning havoc in the quieter upstairs with Alex, the two boys now crouched outside of a bedroom door. Alex perched a tan hand on the door handle, other hand poised in a 'hush' motion over his lips as Karl desperately with held giggles. On a silent count to three, Alex swung open the door and Karl leapt to his feet, shining the flashlight on his phone into the darkness of the bedroom.

  
Two figures on the bed, nearly invisible, shrieked and scrambled away from the prying light with angry shouts. Alex stood by the doorframe, doubled over in laughter before frantically grabbing Karl's wrist to tug him away. 

  
"Let's go, they sound mad!" He wheezed, and Karl haphazardly stumbled out of the room and slammed shut the door behind them. Angry grumbles continued to ring out behind the boys as they stumbled down the stairs, crashing into half passed out party goers slumped on the staircase on their way. 

  
"That was your stupidest idea tonight," Karl chuckled once they were safely on the ground floor, consumed by the swathes of sweat drenched teens around them. "We almost got killed, like, twice."

  
"Hey! It was fun, though." Alex rebuked, tears of laughter still brimming in the corners of his dark eyes. Karl just hummed in response, giggling softly at the thought of how many highschoolers shitty hook-ups he'd wrecked tonight. Warm air and the scent of various alcohols swamped him as they turned into the kitchen to scour for more free drink- and that was when Karl first saw him. 

  
Blue and white varsity football jackets hung off the forms of him and his friends, it was a group of five or six of them. The particular boy that had caught Karl's eye was the only one whose voice wasn't loud enough to be heard from across the kitchen, and maybe that was what first drew Karl to him. Make no mistake, the boy was still laughing and drinking, running his fingers through his brassy hair. He was just the perfect level of 'out of place'. 

  
"You're staring." Alex's voice beside Karl made him jump and look down at the shorter man who'd reappeared by his side. His arms were wrapped protectively around a nice collection of beer cans he'd likely swiped from someone.

  
"Who's he?" Karl gestured with his head to the boy in question. Alex laughed slightly, eyebrow tilted knowingly.

  
"Sapnap, he's going into his senior year. He's more of an introverted guy, to be honest, but the kid still manages to be the life of the party. He's one of those guys that's always after a good time." Alex cracked open a beer as he spoke, nonchalantly taking a sip before passing it to Karl. The taller boy wrinkled his nose.

  
"Dude, gross! Why'd you drink out of it first?" Karl scoffed, placing the can on the countertop with an audible clank.

  
"It was flat." Alex shrugged defensively, breaking into a grin as he spoke. "Anyways, if you wanna speak to Sapnap, you'd be best taking him away from the big group. I'm off to go play beer pong in the living room." 

  
Karl stared, eyes wide in panic, as Alex turned his back on him to leave. The brunette had hoped that his friend could maybe introduce them, but it seemed Alex's heart laid with booze tonight. Huffing lightly, Karl returned his gaze to Sapnap, who was poised casually on the edge of his group. A false wave of composure settled over Karl, and he made his move across the tile flooring. 

  
"Sapnap, right?" He cringed at the voice crack that wormed its way out of him. Sapnap's burnt umber eyes turned to him, reflecting the glow of the party's string lights intoxicatingly. 

  
"Yeah, that's me. Do I know you?" The boy's words weren't hostile, just a casual openness about them.

  
"I'm Karl, I think we have a mutual friend." Karl laughed nervously, reaching an arm up to soothe the back of his own neck. Sapnap took a sip of his beer, grinning softly and yet totally guarded from Karl. Discontent scratched away at Karl's mind. He wanted to break through these social walls Sapnap had built up, but wasn't sure exactly how.

  
"Alex, isn't it? I saw you go straight over to him when you walked in." Sapnap spoke, and Karl's heart jittered slightly. He had him exactly where he needed him. 

  
"You were watching me?" He poised the question with a smug smile, watching the way Sapnap's eyes grew wide for a moment with a shot of satisfaction. The front he'd put up seemed to melt away in a matter of seconds, leaving Karl face to face with a genuine grin and a spark of chaos. Sapnap leant in, gaze glimmering in a way that was painfully ethereal, corners of his mouth twitching lightly. 

  
"Okay, Karl, I'll tell you what." The younger boy paused to drink from his can once more. "I've got about three packets of glowsticks in my bag, and I know that there's a pool in this house's backyard. Does that sound like a plan to you?" 

  
Karl's booze muddled mind registered the ache of a grin on his own face before things began to blur, memories blurring into each other. The scattered still frames in his mind didn't provide too much clarity, just brief recollections of pushing through sweaty bodies and laughing too hard. He remembers stumbling out of the sliding glass door, catching Sapnap in his arms when the younger tripped on the way out. Then more laughter, he assumed. He didn't remember snapping the glowsticks, just seeing them sink to the bottom and watching with awestruck eyes as the water refracted all the neon lights. 

  
"This is so cool." He breathed, hum of the party so distant now as he gaped at the pinks and oranges scattered under the water. Karl pulled his jacket tighter around him as a cold breeze ran through the yard, then glanced down in surprise. Blue and white fabric was wrapped around his body- when did he even put on Sapnap's jacket? The smudged canvas of his mind didn't answer him. 

  
"This isn't the good bit yet, Karl." Sapnap replied, gesturing Karl over to the water's edge with him. Karl swayed dangerously as Sapnap tugged the varsity jacket off of him, far too drunk now to be stood near a pool of all things. He shivered uncomfortably without the jacket, face contorting in surprise when Sapnap's fingers found the hem of his short sleeved shirt.

  
"What are you-" 

  
"Come on, don't be a little bitch." Sapnap pleaded, and Karl wordlessly let him pull the final layer of fabric over the taller's head. Exposed and cold, Karl wrapped his arms around himself and drew his shoulders up, much to Sapnap's amusement. 

  
The younger's eyes scrunched up as he laughed, a sight so lovely Karl could almost forget his predicament. 

  
"Is your big idea to make me freeze to death?" Karl whined, giggling softly despite himself. Sapnap shook his head lightly, still chuckling, before taking a confident step towards Karl and shoving the taller directly into the pool. 

  
Cold water surrounded Karl as he sank, limbs refusing to move for a few moments. Chlorine burnt his eyes, yet he insisted on keeping them open. All that seemed to exist in this realm of tile and light he'd been plunged into was bright colour, all other sights and sounds muffled by the water. Then, Sapnap was there too, honey eyes straining against the chlorine but still floating beneath the surface with Karl.

  
The boy's russet hair floated around him, catching the pink lights of the glowsticks like an underwater halo, and a smile was plastered across his face. 

  
Maybe it was the burn of oxygen deprivation, but something began to swirl and spiral behind Karl's ribs in that very instant, the first clouds of a summer storm settling over him. 

June 4th

  
Karl opened his eyes and immediately snapped them shut again, bright light feeling like daggers through to his brain. Alex's laugh rang out, a noise all too loud for Karl's agonising hangover. 

  
"Hey, buddy, do you need water?" Karl opened his eyes reluctantly to see Alex speaking, knelt on the floor beside him. Glancing around at his surroundings, Karl eventual registered that he was curled up on his side on Alex's couch with the world's almightiest headache. He nodded weakly. 

  
"Yes, please. Why am I in your living room, Alex? You better not have kidnapped me." Karl rasped out before wincing at the way his throat grated against itself. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, watching Alex bring over a tall glass. He wrapped both hands around it as if it were something precious and pulled it close to his chest appreciatively.

  
"Oh, you idiot!" Alex laughed, before coughing out a much quieter apology at the way Karl winced. "I left you in the kitchen and found you hours later just reeking of chlorine. You kept trying to convince me to let you go home to your mom but she would have killed you, dude. So now you're here."

  
"Sapnap," Karl hummed the word as he began to recall the previous night. "He took me into the pool."

  
"Sounds like you had a wild night, huh? Looks like he wanted to keep in touch." Alex spoke with a grin, carefully reaching out with his hand to take Karl's wrist. Gently as to not disturb Karl's delicate grip on sobriety, Alex turned over Karl's arm to reveal a string of numbers scrawled across it. A smile worked it's way over Karl's face. 

  
"Fuck yeah! He left his phone number."

  
"Not so fast, Romeo. Look closer- you're missing a digit." Alex pointed to the inky smudge at the end of the line where the final number used to be. Karl's face fell and he groaned, throwing his head back on the couch with a frustrated yell. Alex broke into laughter at his friend's misfortune, tumbling to the floor under the weight of his own amusement. 

  
"Wait!" Karl snapped back up, eyes glowing with inspiration. "You've seen Diary of a Wimpy Kid, right?" Alex only laughed harder, gaze wide in disbelief.

  
"Don't tell me you're going to ring every single number that starts like that but change the final digit? Seriously?" He blanched, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

  
"Listen, there's only ten possibilities of what this number could be. It won't take me that long." Karl insisted further, waving his hands enthusiastically. "I'm basically a genius!"  
Alex only shook his head more, grinning at the mere stupidity of the idea. 

June 6th

  
Karl hunched over his phone, nervously glancing at the time. It read out 11pm, and he considered waiting another day- it was late, what if Sapnap wasn't awake? As soon as the thought crossed his mind he shook it away, steeling himself and opening up the dial menu. He'd already spent two days finding excuses to not ring, fuelled by his anxiety, if he left it any longer it would be weird. 

  
Sucking in a long breath, he typed in the string of numbers he'd burnt into his memory by now, ending it with a zero and shakily pushing the ring button. The dialtone buzzed out in the tense silence of his room three times. Then, a click. 

  
"Hello?" Karl's voice came out much smaller than he wanted it too.

  
"Hello, dear!" The voice of a rather elderly woman returned. "Who's this?"

  
Karl let out a noise of frustration and slammed down on the hang up button. He didn't really expect the first number to work, but it still felt horribly deflating to have worked up all that courage for nothing. 

  
After a couple of out of service numbers, a few strangers and a very bizarre experience of being yelled at by an aggressive teenage girl, Karl's patience was wearing thin. With spirits dampened, he mechanically punched in the phone number that would probably haunt him forever at this point, ending it with a seven. He hit the green phone symbol that seemed to be mocking him now, leering at him with its gut wrenching mystery. The dialtone only rung once before a voice came from the other end. 

  
"Hello?" It was distorted by the line, but Karl's disappointed heart immediately slammed against his ribcage with excited fever. 

  
"Sapnap!" He practically wept, flinging himself off his bed and onto a standing position in his bedroom. The boy gripped his phone close to his face like it would get up and escape, too afraid to let his moment go now that he had it. 

  
"Who's this?" Sapnap sounded groggy, and Karl realised with a pang he'd probably disturbed the other boy's sleep. 

  
"Karl, from the party, remember? You wrote your number on my arm, but the last digit smudged and I-" Karl excitedly rambled, pacing in circles over his bedroom floor, stomach jittering itself into knots inside of him.

  
"Karl?" Sapnap sounded more awake now. "I thought you weren't ever going to call. Wait, how did you find my number if the last digit smudged off?" Karl froze, realising how weird this situation would make him look. 

  
"Uh," He began sheepishly, face burning up. "Have you ever seen Diary of a Wimpy Kid?" 

  
Sapnap's laughter was loud and harsh down his phone speaker, but Karl slumped against the bed again, eyes shut as if he were trying to drown himself in the sound. 


End file.
